The Mathematics of R150
2026-09-11
The Mathematics of R150 — A Friday Evening Reality Report.
It is Friday evening.
I have been home since 15:10.
After chilling out for about two hours, I fell asleep at around 16:00 and woke again at 17:10. I got out of bed, made coffee, and looked at the prepaid electricity meter.
16.4 units remaining.
Then came the part of Friday evening that nobody puts into the glossy advertisements about ordinary life.
The arithmetic.
My net income for today was R1.
Yes.
One rand.
That was what remained after buying two sachets of cat food, 500 grams of sugar, paying the two-day-overdue R50 I owed for meat sourced for Wednesday’s supper, and settling another R33 debt.
This is what financial pressure actually looks like.
It isn’t always an empty cupboard.
Sometimes it is a cupboard with food in it and a wallet that cannot keep up.
The Gift That Became Two Meals.
Last night we had half a roast chicken on rolls.
That chicken was a gift from my Army buddy, Andy.
From now on, whenever I refer to food or other necessities that arrived through his generosity, I am going to mark them:
TTAG — Thanks To Andy’s Gift.
Because gratitude should be recorded too.
Tonight, we will probably eat the second half of that roast chicken on bread.
The bones won’t be wasted.
They will join last night’s bones in the freezer, and tomorrow they will become soup.
I’ll add half a packet of red speckled beans, also sourced from yesterday’s grocery gift delivery.
That is another reality of living on a tight budget:
Nothing gets casually thrown away.
A chicken carcass isn’t rubbish.
It is tomorrow’s soup.
Then There Is Cyber Cat.
As I write this, Kitty is meowing for his supper.
One moment.
Cyber Cat needs attention.
I’ll give him a quarter of a packet now and the balance later.
And that brings me back to the arithmetic.
Kitty needs his kibble, and he goes through two sachets of wet food every day.
At R15 per sachet, that is R30 a day.
For Kitty, that is a non-negotiable cost.
So tomorrow’s R150 immediately becomes a much smaller number.
R150.
Minus R90 for Kitty’s wet food over three days.
That leaves R60.
R20 for Saturday.
R20 for Sunday.
R20 for Monday.
Then Tuesday arrives, and another R150 can hopefully be earned.
Except…
What about electricity?
The R150 Survival Equation.
Perhaps the better calculation is:
R45 for Kitty’s food.
R100 for prepaid electricity.
R5 left over.
Add today’s R1.
That gives me R6.
And suddenly I realise something.
I have never claimed to be an expert mathematician.
But perhaps the problem isn’t my mathematics.
Perhaps R150 simply doesn’t divide very well when it has to carry several days of life on its back.
This is survival arithmetic.
It isn’t the neat arithmetic of a classroom.
It is:
“If I spend this, what happens to that?”
“If I buy electricity, what do we eat?”
“If I buy food, what happens when the electricity runs out?”
“If I keep the money, what happens to Kitty?”
Every answer creates another question.
The Cupboard Is Not Empty.
And this is where things become complicated.
Because I cannot honestly say that we are starving.
We have food.
Fridge.
- 30 large eggs. TTAG.
- 850g Parmalat Cheddar Cheese. TTAG.
- 1.2kg bananas. TTAG.
Cupboard.
- One pocket of oranges. TTAG.
- 1kg red speckled beans. TTAG.
- 2kg Tastic rice. TTAG.
So no, we won’t starve tonight.
There is food in the house.
There is enough to improvise meals.
There are eggs.
There is rice.
There are beans.
There is fruit.
There is cheese.
There is the remaining chicken.
And tomorrow there will be soup.
But food security and financial security are not the same thing.
That is something I am learning firsthand.
And Then There Is the Gas.
The LPG cylinder has another number attached to it.
Forty-four days have gone by.
I suspect there may only be a few days of gas left.
When it runs out, there will be another R300 required for a refill.
And that is how poverty works.
It doesn’t necessarily arrive as one enormous disaster.
It arrives as a sequence of little doors.
Electricity.
Food.
Gas.
Transport.
Debt.
The next day’s income.
Each one waits for you.
The Question Behind the Numbers.
I can speak honestly about the uncertainty that poorer people face every day because I am not writing about it from a comfortable distance.
I am sitting here looking at the numbers myself.
I am willing to work.
I am willing to earn extra money.
I don’t want charity to be the solution to my life.
But then comes the question that is much harder to answer:
How?
Where?
What work can I do?
Where can I find it?
How do I turn a few spare hours into enough additional income to make the arithmetic work?
Those are the questions that remain unanswered tonight.
A Prayer From the Kitchen Table.
So, Lord, here I am.
I have food in the cupboard.
I have a roof over my head.
I have a cat demanding his supper.
I have a little electricity left.
I have some gas left.
I have work when work is available.
And yet I am still looking at tomorrow wondering how everything will fit together.
I need help, Lord.
But who can help me?
Who is willing?
Who is able?
And perhaps most importantly:
Where is the opportunity I haven’t seen yet?
I am prepared to work for it.
Show me where to look.
The Reality Report Continues.
This isn’t a story about giving up.
It is a record of where I am right now.
Friday evening.
Home since 15:10.
A nap from 16:00 until 17:10.
Coffee at the kitchen table.
16.4 electricity units.
One rand left from today’s work.
A roast chicken becoming two meals and tomorrow’s soup.
Thirty eggs.
Rice.
Beans.
Fruit.
Cheese.
A cat who doesn’t understand economics.
And R150 waiting to be divided into the next few days of life.
Maybe I haven’t yet found the right way to divide it.
Maybe the answer isn’t better arithmetic.
Maybe the answer is finding another source of income.
So tomorrow I will get up again.
I will look for work.
I will do what I can.
And I will keep writing down what happens.
Because this is what ordinary life looks like when you are living close to the edge.
Not a statistic.
Not a headline.
Not a theory.
A Friday evening.
One rand.
And a question about tomorrow.
✍️ Othello Cody Verrocchio
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